Nighttime is magical. We’re all so wise at night. We can plan out the perfect day, but then our plans go awry once the day gets here. The reason for this is that we try to make decisions on the fly, and we’re too influenced by what feels good in the moment.
Consider these ideas for effective planning at night and then following through with those plans:
Know your goals. What do you want to accomplish? You can’t make effective plans until you know what you’re trying to do. If you don't know what your goals are in the short and long term, now is the time to set them.
Set aside time each night to plan the next day. Each evening, at a certain time, plan out what you're going to do the following day. Do this with the same regularity as brushing your teeth.
Be ruthless with prioritization. It's imperative to prioritize your activity. Time is at a premium, so it's important to maximize its utility. There's a limit to how much you can accomplish each day. Ensure that you're getting the most important things accomplished. You can determine the priority based on your goals.
Ideally, your list will be quite short. If you have 10 things on your list, you have things that are minimally important. Stick to the most important things. You can make another list of things that can be done after the items on the first list are accomplished.
Make your evening decisions count. At night, it's easy to decide that you're going to go to the gym the following day. It's easy to decide that you're going to eat in a healthy manner. It's during the day that you struggle to make wise decisions.
How many times have you planned on going to the gym at a certain time, only to talk yourself out of it when the time came?
The solution is to make as few decisions as possible during the day. Make your decisions at night and then just focus your energy on executing during the day. Avoid giving yourself the opportunity to change your mind. Just believe that you made the right choice the night before.
You can defeat procrastination. You made good decisions last night, so there's no reason to delay beginning your day. When you prioritize your activities, you can be confident that you're spending your time well.
Make your decisions when you’re decision-making powers are at their best - at night. It’s obvious what you should eat tomorrow to be at your best. It’s obvious that you should go to the gym, read a chapter of a certain book, or meditate for 20 minutes. It’s much harder to follow through on them when that time comes.
Make your plan at night and then focus on executing it. Avoid allowing yourself to make decisions regarding those items during the day. You already thought about them and made your decisions. There’s no reason to re-negotiate them.
Sit down and make a plan each night for the following day. Fight like mad to stick to the plan the next day. You’ll love the results!
